Veil of Civility: A Black Shuck Thriller (Declan McIver Series) (60 page)

Kemiss took his foot off the brake and allowed the Cadillac to move forward onto the drive. Hitting the accelerator as the driveway ahead of him began to incline towards his house, he swore to himself as he noticed all the lights in the three story mansion were off. Wasn't anyone home? They'd better be. He hadn't wasted all of this time driving just to find an empty house. He turned towards the home's garage and pushed the button on his overhead console to open the garage door. The door shifted and raised a few inches before returning to the closed position.

"Now what the hell?" he said, raising his voice though no one else was in the car to hear. "Can't even leave the garage door unlocked when you know I'm coming home?"

The frustration he constantly felt with his wife was mutual, he was sure. Theirs had become a marriage of convenience and had ceased to have anything to do with love a long time ago. At times he wasn't sure if it had ever had anything to do with love, but he guessed at some point they had at least liked each other enough to have had two children together. Now it was all about mutual benefits. He was the Senator with the beautiful stay-at-home wife and well-mannered children and she got to play rich socialite in venues around the country, and sometimes around the world.

He slammed the Cadillac into park and pushed open the door as he grabbed his coat and took his keys from the ignition. Walking around the house to the front porch, he inserted the key into the door and pushed it open. Just as it had appeared from the driveway below, the house was completely dark.

"Hello?" he called, as he stepped inside and pushed the door closed with his foot. The house was big, but not big enough for the sound of his voice to echo, though he imagined it doing so in the obviously empty first floor. "You know, I don't ask for much but a little respect would be great. If you're not going to be here you could at least call and let me know. It's not like I had any work that I could be doing or anything."

He set down his coat and keys on the oak table in the foyer and turned on a lamp. He knew that the regularly scheduled family night they had been observing for years really got on his wife's nerves and that she would rather be elsewhere. So would he, but their two boys loved it and, aside from using it as a political check mark during election years, that was why he insisted that the tradition be kept alive. The boys were the only good thing that had come of their union, in his mind, and they were still too young to realize that their parents' relationship had disintegrated. Maybe that time had come and his wife, who spent more time with the kids than he did, had realized it and finally found the excuse she needed to end their weekly pow-wow.

"Well, screw you, too," he said, as he started towards the stairs that would lead him to his third floor study. He could still do all of the work he needed to do from home, but he preferred the distractions that came with the Washington D.C. lifestyle. As he placed a foot on the first step, he looked into the darkened living room beside the stairs and stopped. Rolling his eyes and letting out an audible sigh, he said, "Don't tell me. It's time for one of our talks, right? Jesus Christ, Mary Ellen. How many times do we have to go over the same stuff? You'd better want a divorce this time."

He stepped off the stairway and down into the sunken living room where the figure of his wife was seated on their leather sofa. "You know, you could at least answer me. You could at least tell me the boys are asleep before I go cussing through the house." He stepped further into the living room and as he did, a glint of light caught his eye. He narrowed his eyes and looked closer at the shadowy figure sitting on the couch.

"Oh!" he said, as he stumbled back, realizing the woman's mouth was duct taped and her hands and feet were bound. He turned quickly towards the doorway. As he stepped back up into the foyer with a hand out for his car keys on the table, he felt something cold press against the back of his head from inside the living room. Raising his hands and turning around slowly, he saw the barrel of a suppressed handgun.

"Who the hell are you?" David Kemiss said, as he squinted into the darkness towards the darkly-clad figure holding the pistol to his head.

"By now, Senator, I would've thought we were good enough friends for you to recognize me," Declan said, as he stepped out of the shadows, a black balaclava rolled up onto his forehead in order to reveal his face. "My name's Declan McIver and we've been doing a little dance of sorts. It's my turn to lead."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Declan could tell by the slight narrowing of Kemiss' eyes as he spoke that the man knew exactly who he was and why he was there. He was prepared for all of the standard denials and the attempts at convincing him that he had the wrong man, but he knew otherwise. Everything about Kemiss set bells ringing through his subconscious like fire alarms in a public library. Finally, after numerous attempts on his life, he had found the man who had conspired with Ruslan Baktayev to murder Abaddon Kafni and commit an act of terror against his own country. Now all he had to do was get him to admit it.

"Save it, Senator," Declan said, as he stepped closer and grabbed Kemiss by the shoulder, pushing him towards the door. "It's time for a bit of schooling in how to tell the truth."

"You won't get anything—"

Okan Osman, dressed in the same black attire as Declan and with his balaclava pulled over his face, stepped in front of Kemiss as he stumbled forward from Declan's push. Catching the man in the stomach with his closed fist Osman said, "That's for the children of Abaddon Kafni," as the senator doubled over and gasped for air.

"Everything is set up," Osman said, as he kept Kemiss from falling to the floor in pain.

Declan nodded. "Let's show Mr. And Mrs. Kemiss a bit of Irish hospitality, shall we?"

Osman stood Kemiss up and led him away as Declan returned to the living room and lifted Mary Ellen Kemiss from the sofa by the bindings around her wrists. The woman made muffled pleas through the duct tape covering her mouth as he pushed her into the foyer and past the stairwell after Osman and her husband.

Osman stopped briefly and pulled open a door at the back of the mansion's luxurious kitchen. As the door swung open, Declan felt a blast of heat hit his face and heard a monstrous roar. A dim orange glow came from the darkened room beyond and he swallowed hard, the idea of what he was about to do piercing through his conscience like a splinter of glass.

Osman marched Kemiss into the garage as Declan followed with his wife, pushing her down into a lawn chair positioned just inside the room before closing the kitchen door behind them and locking it. The temperature inside the three car garage was sweltering and immediately sweat formed on Declan's forehead. He turned away from Mary Ellen Kemiss towards her husband, whom Osman had placed in another lawn chair in front of a makeshift spotlight that shone brightly against the garage door. Seated on his hands, which Osman had secured behind his back, David Kemiss wriggled uncomfortably in the chair as he looked around his unrecognizable garage, clam shell sweat stains forming under his arms. Standing at the man's left shoulder, Declan followed his gaze as he laid eyes on the third masked man in the room who was bent down and holding a fireplace poker in front of a roaring 30,000 BTU propane tank heater that was the source of the room's temperature and of the nearly deafening noise. The end of the poker was beginning to glow red as Altair Nazari turned it slowly in his hands, ensuring the surface was evenly heated.

Next Kemiss moved his head slightly towards a large black tarp hanging from the ceiling and concealing part of the garage from view. "So you're going to torture me?" he breathed, as sweat rolled down his forehead. "I can cope with torture."

Declan stepped into his line of sight shaking his head and said, "No, Senator. I don't think you can. I've done a bit of research on you and I'm pretty sure the closest thing you've ever experienced compared to what you're about to is burning your mouth on your morning cappuccino, and while that hurts, it's nothing compared to a red hot poker pushed against the inside of your leg. Do you know what happens to human flesh at 1500 degrees?"

Kemiss swallowed hard and tried to wet his dry lips with his tongue. "The American government doesn't negotiate with terrorists."

The idea that Kemiss would invoke the name of America and attempt to align himself with the United States filled Declan with rage. Was there no end to the kind of depravity that men like him were capable of? Could they not just realize they were caught and admit their guilt? It wasn't like the man could claim ignorance. Hurting innocent people, especially children, was wrong no matter what country you were from and what language you spoke.

"Oh, I know," Declan said, doing his best to keep his temper in check. "But I'm not interested in negotiating and you're not the American government. We both know who's been doing the terrorizing in this case. Why did you kill Abaddon Kafni?"

"I didn't. You did. After the bomb you planted at the Barton Center failed to do the job."

"That's a very well-rehearsed story, Senator. I have to admit, I'm a little impressed with the way you've gone about constructing it,'" Declan said, as he turned around and pulled a tarp-covered steel service cart over to where Kemiss was seated. "Unfortunately you picked the wrong person to set up. Do you know what happens when you strike the top of the human kneecap with a claw hammer?" He pulled back the tarp to reveal a variety of tools, including a hickory handled claw hammer. "If you strike just the right spot at just the right speed, the claw breaks the skin and lodges behind the kneecap. Then you just push up on the handle and pry the patella out like a crooked nail. It works even better if you make a small incision first." Declan popped open the blade on a folding knife he withdrew from his pocket.

Sweat rolled off Kemiss' forehead and although he did his best to blink it away, it stung his eyes, causing tears to form in the corners. He opened and closed his mouth several times, licking his lips, his discomfort obvious.

Declan continued as he picked up a bottle of water from the service cart and took a sip, "You and Castellano seemed so interested in my past activities with the IRA that I thought I'd give you a little demonstration of what the Provos did to people who'd turned on their own team, like you've done." He slowly poured the water on the ground at Kemiss' feet and picked up a small extension cord from the service cart, holding its end up and twisting it around in his hand before slicing one end off with the folding knife.

"You see, the IRA didn't take kindly to touts. Informers, if you'd prefer. They got really grumpy when they found out someone was consorting with the enemy. They would schedule a session with an internal security unit called 'the Nutting Squad' and, if you were smart, you'd present yourself at the right place and time, answer their questions honestly and put the matter behind you. That's if you weren't guilty. If you were guilty, well, the quicker you told the truth, the better, because these men liked to inflict pain. They really got off on it and you don't want to know the outcome of a long, drawn out interrogation, Senator."

Declan stopped talking and let his words sink in. He didn't like talking about the kinds of things the IRA did to people that were thought to have been informers. The IRA's brand of justice was anything but evenly applied and often times the torture began before a word was even spoken. He didn't have any direct knowledge of how the Internal Security Unit operated, but word got around. Many times the victims had turned out to be completely innocent and even with the ones who made confessions, their guilt was questionable. Under such appalling circumstances people would admit to anything just to stop the pain. In the case of the Nutting Squad, the hostility ceased with a visit from a priest and a bullet in the head.

Declan did his best to push the thoughts of dumped bodies and grief-stricken wives and children from his head. They were memories from a chapter in his life that he would do anything to rewrite and while he had never directly caused such pain or been involved with the men who had, he was guilty by association. The act of torturing another human being was atrocious to him and certainly not something he condoned or thought could ever be useful. It was the psychological effect of the possibility that did the trick most often and that was the linchpin of his plan tonight. If he allowed Kemiss to see through it, then the game they were playing would be at an end and Declan would lose.

"Why did you kill Abaddon Kafni and why are you conspiring with Baktayev to attack your own country?"

"You're insane," Kemiss said, as he closed his eyes tightly and screwed up his face. "You're an animal."

Declan could tell Kemiss was just about at the point where the grand finale he had planned would have the desired effect. "An insane animal? Good thought, Senator. I'm sure you know all about insane animals and what they do to the kind of innocent people you've conspired with them to attack. The Chechen militants like Baktayev? They're insane animals and he's the leader of the pack."